


is it ever going to be enough?

by Analyse (D_Willims)



Series: it'll still be two days till we say we're sorry [2]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Even When He Only Knew Their Numbers, Five Loves His Siblings, Gen, The Academy Isn't Home Except When It Is, author hasn't read the comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 02:13:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17972522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/D_Willims/pseuds/Analyse
Summary: There's only four bodies. There's always seven of them.





	1. i remember when you were gambling to win

**Author's Note:**

> Fic and chapter titles from "Gold Guns Girls" by Metric
> 
> Series title from "One Week" by the Bare Naked Ladies.

There’s only four bodies.

Five holds onto that thought, to that small ray of hope, as he starts the grim work of digging them out of the rubble. It’s terrible work. He’s never felt so small nor so tired as when he’s pulling the four bodies from their makeshift tombs. And he has to stop several times to cry or vomit or both. Sometimes he convinces himself they’re still warm and he has to sit hard on the ground. But by the time darkness swallows him up, he has all four bodies on the flattest part of the ground.

He doesn’t sleep that night, though he knows he should. Instead, he sits on a piece of debris and watches over his siblings. Ready to defend them from anything that might come along.

There’s only four bodies.

By the time the sky starts lightening, Five has accepted that there’s no scavenging animals. There’s nothing as far as he can see in all direction, for miles and miles. Nothing left alive.

The thought nearly breaks him.

There’s only four bodies.

Maybe it’s not them, maybe Dad had found someone else to join his stupid academy. Five didn’t see his siblings grow up, after all. They could be anyone. If he stares hard enough, though, Five can see pieces of his siblings faces in the bodies in front of him. Three’s eyes and Four’s smile. Faces he’s spent a lifetime just staring at, but never understanding the people behind.

There’s only four bodies.

He starts shifting through the rubble again. Searching desperately, needily for Six and Seven. Maybe they survived and were waiting for him. Or maybe they weren’t here at all, maybe they were out there somewhere and they needed him.

His fingers feel like raw meat when night falls again. Bloodied and bruised, at least two broken knuckles. He finds no sign of his missing two siblings, but he’s scavenged some useful things from the remnants of home.

Home.

Five’s never thought about it like that before. But he makes of soft fabrics he’s found and curls up next to his siblings’ bodies and is overwhelmed by the feeling. _I want to go home_. And he cries himself to sleep.

There’s only four bodies.

But burying them is the hardest part of these first days. He forces himself to eat, makes a sandwich out of squished bread and unopened marshmallows and a miraculously in tact jar of peanut butter. It feels like Seven’s with him, but he doesn’t cry. _Can’t_ cry he realizes later, because dehydration has set in.

And then he sets to work covering the bodies with dirt, burying them as best he can with tired and aching muscles. He lines each pile of dirt with rocks from the rubble and marks the graves with pieces of slate and chalk from what’s left of the kitchen. The one mom used to write the day’s meal plan on.

One. Two. Three. Four.

There’s only four bodies.

As he adjusts to this new reality, Five keeps _looking_ for Six and Seven. Expanding his search into every wider areas around home. But he comes back every night because he can’t leave them, he can’t.

The only thing he has to show for his troubles is Vanya’s book. He reads it until it falls apart and then finds a second copy at another library and reads it again. It’s the only piece of his family he has left until he can figure out how to get back to him.

He lays out another pile of dirt, too, same as the first four. And rewrites the markers—the chalk has long faded since he first started anyway.

Luther. Diego. Allison. Klaus. Ben.

\--

They had all been there, for a moment on stage.

When Five opens his eyes, there’s only four people in front of him. And he can’t hear over the rushing in his ears, the way his heart beats too loudly against his ribs. Tears collect in his eyes and he refuses to let them fall.

If he cries now, the assholes are just going to want to comfort him. They don’t understand that he’s twice their age. That he’s supposed to be protecting them. How much he’s given up, how much he hurt over and over again just to be here with them. They don't  _understand_.

His hands feel cold and empty now that they’ve let go.

The door closes and the sound drags Five’s attention back to the task at hand. The clock’s started, the world ends in twenty-four hours, and he loses his family again. And again and again and again. Some sick joke of a time loop.

Allison’s laying on the cot and it’ll still be a few hours until she wakes, if he remembers the day correctly. And the second time around it’s Diego who stays with her, still pale from the blood transfusion.

“Where are they going? We have…” He gets up as he’s talking and that turns into a mistake. The world wobbles violently to the left and his stomach roils. It’s like eating that damn Twinkie all over again. Five swallows, pushes through it. “We have to…” Taking the step turns out to be a bigger mistake. There’s a sharp pain in his side and he presses his fingers to it, feels hot sticky blood through the sweater vest. Huh, he’d forgotten all about the shrapnel.

The world goes dark and he’s not even aware when Diego catches him by the elbows.


	2. everybody else said better luck next time

Every time he closes he’s eyes, he sees _nothing_.

The long expanse of nothing. A world that was covered in a thick layer of ash. Small fires that never stop burning. Harsh sunlight and cold nights.

And it’s nothing.

\--

Five’s _drifting_. Not really asleep, but not really awake either. Just aware enough of Diego’s chest under his cheek, his brother’s arms cradling him like a small child. He’s fifty-eight years old and he doesn’t _need_ to be carried around like this.

He wants it so badly, though.

He didn’t even realize they were moving, though. But then Diego is sliding him in between ice cold sheets, tucking blankets up around him.

It’s instinct more than anything else that leads Five to lifting his hands, curling his fingers around Diego’s knife holster. Clings frantically and childishly. So hard that his knuckles turn white and hurt with straining effort of it all.

What he means to say is _We need to find Vanya_ and at the same time a distant, long-dead part of his mind screams _Don’t wanna be alone_. And it all comes out in a jumbled, slurred mess: “Vanya. Don’t wanna. Need t’find. Alone.”

Diego chuckles, a brief bark of a laugh that has no real humor in it. And Five feels it through his hands more than _hears_ it. But it still fills him with a warmth that spreads all the way down to his toes, fills the room with something he can’t name. Five is desperate to hold onto it forever.

“Don’t worry, bro,” Diego assures as he loosens Five’s grip. “We remember the mission.” His hands smooth over the blankets again, with a surprisingly if faltering gentleness Five wouldn’t have thought Diego capable of. “You just rest up.”

Five supposes he doesn’t have much of a choice.

\--

Allison’s already there when fitful sleeping turns into the sudden jolt of _awake_. Five is screaming, sobbing, shaking for the first time in years. Decades maybe. He worked so hard, trained himself to sleep dreamlessly and to wake up silently. It’s pitiful that he’s broken down like this. But she draws him into her arms and rocks with him, smooths a hand down his back. And there’s not a single ounce of pity.

It’s so natural in a way that comfort hadn’t been with Diego, or when Luther carried him home drunk. In a way that comfort has never been natural for any of them.

He wonders if this is how she holds Claire when she wakes up in the middle of the night. Does Claire have nightmares? If he’s done the math right, she’s not even four yet and that’s _so young_. She’s so new and fresh to the world, he hopes that the scary things haven’t infected her. But if they already have…

Her mother is here. Taking care of her stupid and frustrating brothers instead of her daughter. And he wants so desperately to tell Allison to just _leave_. Go home to her daughter. Stop letting this place drag her into its madness.

But the world is _ending_ and Allison needs to be here. To stop it so Claire has a future instead of letting Allison spending her last moments with her daughter.

The guilt hits his stomach like a sucker punch and Five sobs louder, harder. He shakes so hard that every joint in his body aches. And Allison pulls him so close that Five feels all the air leave his lungs. His arms wrap around her so that he can twist the back of her shirt between his hands.

“Don’t leave me,” he hiccups into her collarbone. It stupid and selfish and so, so childish. And he’s been so desperate for contact for so long that he can’t even care.

Her lips press against the top of his head and she rocks him until he falls asleep again.

\--

There’s cold fingers on his face, dragging him back towards the land of the living. Five thinks, anyway. He might still be asleep. Or maybe blissfully, finally dead. Ben’s there, at any rate. Sitting on the bed next to him and gently pushing his sweat-slicked hair away from his face. A slow, rhythmic motion that threats to puts Five back under again.

Five forces himself to stay awake. Focuses on the cool, dry touch of his brother’s hands. So solid and real, but still so obviously not alive. If he’s honest, Five has missed Ben most of all. Or maybe that’s just been this hellish week where he had all of his sibling again but no Ben. Ben’s already, painfully dead.

“’M sorry,” he slurs. Turns his head away and presses his face into the pillow so Ben can’t see him cry. It’s embarrassing enough that Allison has. “Shoulda been there.”

Should’ve been there when Ben died and for Vanya because she needed someone. And every time Klaus bottomed out and when Luther was ripped open. When Allison was getting divorced and all the times Diego needed someone to stitch him up.

He’d been such a brat just running away like that. Leaving his siblings behind like Dad wouldn’t fuck them over.

“No one was there.” Ben dismisses the apology, the guilt trip, with a little snort of a laugh. It’s somehow warm and genuine from a man talking about his family abandoning him. “Eternity is too long to hold onto petty bullshit.”

That has not been Five’s experience, but he understands the sentiment at least. And Ben is still running his fingers through Five’s hair. Soothing. But also maybe as desperate to touch as Five is to be touched. It’s been _so long_.

Gradually, the touch becomes less sure and then it disappears altogether. And for a moment, Five thinks maybe he’s drifted off into a dreamless sleep. Or maybe that he finally woke up from a good dream for once.

“Sorry, shortstack. Can’t hold it for that long.” When did Klaus get there? And somehow so close before Five even noticed. Already sitting cross-legged on the floor, chest against the edge of the bed and arms resting next to Five’s face. Chin on his stacked hands.

So close that Five almost can’t look away from Klaus’s glassy eyes. “You’re high.” It’s a statement, not a question. He’s not even disappointed. The familiarity is comforting.

Klaus giggles, sharp and on edge. Almost hysterical. “I am so goddamn sober I could puke rainbows and sparkles,” he says nonsensically. Which strikes Five as a very un-sober thought, but he’s too tired to point it out. “It’s the fucking worst.”

“Yeah.” Five doesn’t believe Klaus but he doesn’t know what else to say. He’s tired again, even though he must have been sleeping for hours. His eyes close before he even thinks through the thought that he needs to stay awake.

Silence stretches between them for a long time and Five almost hopes that Klaus has gone away. (He takes back that hope because Klaus _went away_ for thirty-five years and he can’t bear to lose him again.) The quiet is broken is only by Klaus drawing a long _Fiiiiiiine_ like a hiss through his teeth. And then a thin, trembling hand starts carding through his hair. More hesitant than Ben’s and more unnatural than Allison’s, but still warm and real and comforting and safe.

\--

He’s drifting again, swimming on the edges of sleep, when the door opens. Klaus is asleep, though, still sitting on the floor. Using his arm as a pillow, face too close to Five’s and hand tangled in Five’s hair. Five considers pushing him away.

Considers pulling him closer.

“I didn’t think Klaus would tell you,” Luther starts. He doesn’t leave the doorway, and he keeps his gaze down. Too far away when everyone else is moving closer. “We found Vanya. Allison’s helping her clean up now.”

Then Luther is just gone. Before Five can follow up, before he can invite his brother to stay.

A singular factor solved in a calculation that is so impossibly complex that Five can’t even begin to untangle it. No matter how many equations he scrawls across these walls. Working and reworking every angle until nothing means anything. There’s so many things to fix and he’s just one person, trapped in a child’s body at that.

He shifts to find a more comfortable sleeping position. Klaus emits a little whine and his hand tightens in Five’s hair. “Ow,” Five grumbles. But he makes no effort to remove Klaus’s hand.

\--

The final time Five wakes up that night, he wakes up _cold_. Klaus is still there, curled up on the floor next to the bed this time. He’s dragged all the blankets off the bed and around himself. Five sits up and wraps the thin sheet he’d been left with around his shoulders.

Another knock on the door. So he wasn’t imagining that, then.

“Come in,” he croaks. Winces. His throat is dry, like the Apocalypse all over again.

The door opens and Vanya slips through the narrow crack. The sweats she’s swearing are obviously Allison’s, and not any baggier than her standard wardrobe but they somehow highlight just how small Vanya is. Vanya, destroyer of words, somehow tinier than her siblings. She has two mugs of steaming coffee and a plate of peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches.

“I can’t sleep.” Five recognizes that haunted look in her eyes, though. She doesn’t _want_ to sleep.

He gratefully accepts one of the coffees and the plate. Offers her a tiny smile as she steps over Klaus and scoots into place next to him. Their knees press against each other.

“You can stay here,” he says.

Then, it’s quiet. The comfortable kind of quiet like with Delores. Just two people who know each other so well that they don’t have to say anything. They have peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches and coffee. And for right now that’s enough.

“I miss you,” Vanya says. The predawn light streams through the window and the plate is empty, the coffee is gone. She corrects herself, “ _Missed_ you.”

But the first one feels more correct. He’s been back for a week but he hasn’t connected with anyone. Not Vanya, and not anyone else. He never should’ve left her apartment that first night. Should’ve stayed and stayed and stayed until she was sick of him. Maybe none of this would’ve happened.

“I looked for you,” he says. “I thought maybe…” It’s crystalized now, though. After last night, on the stage. He never found Vanya’s body because there was none. Her power had consumed her whole and he hadn’t even seen it coming.

There’s hesitation coiled tight in her body, like she thinks she’s going to be pushed away. They’ve hurt each other so much. But she reaches out, wraps an arm around him and pulls him into her. The shoulder of her pajamas is still damp from her freshly showered hair and she smells like soap and laundry detergent. He doesn’t realize that he’s crying, silent tears rolling down his cheeks, until she reaches her other hand across to wipe them away.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” he says. An echo of that first night.

\--

It’s late in the morning when Five wakes up for the day. And they’re all there. _Everything_ he’s needed and wanted for so long. Vanya’s curled up under his arm and Klaus is asleep on the floor. Luther sleeps sitting in the desk chair, pushed as far from the others as he can. And Allison and Diego have somehow crammed together in the window; Allison’s head on Diego’s shoulder.

Maybe things will be okay this time around.


End file.
